In the Kinetics of Libya, A Constitution Destroyed by Catch Phrases

Our Republican leaders haven’t violated the Constitution’s 5th and 8th amendments by torturing suspected criminals, prisoners of war, and random foreign nationals. We simply submitted “enemy combatants”–who may or may not have actually been picked up on the battlefield–to “enhanced interrogation methods,” formerly known as torture (sort of like rock star Prince). Our Democratic President didn’t violate Constitution by launching America into another war (this one in Libya) without Congressional approval, he simply unilaterally chose to get in involved in a “kinetic military action”–where he ordered the American military to attack the planes, tanks and the military installations of another sovereign country’s army.

I suspect our founders feared the Constitution might be shredded by military coup, civil war, foreign invasion or dictatorship, but I doubt they ever suspected it would be ruined by semantics.

George Orwell was mostly right. Mostly. Our leaders don’t exactly claim “War is Peace,” but being told war is a “humanitarian kinetic military action” isn’t far off.

Jon Walker

Jonathan Walker grew up in New Jersey. He graduated from Wesleyan University in 2006. He is now living in the Washington DC area. He created a politics and policy blog, The Walker Report (http://jwalkerreport.blogspot.com/).